


Shatter

by Kuriake



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic)
Genre: Canon Related, Developing Relationship, F/M, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:52:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuriake/pseuds/Kuriake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She mends his faith, and his heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for still_grrr challenge "Het pairings". Spoilers for the Season 8 arc 'Retreat'; unbeta'd. All recognizable characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions; no profit is being made.

_“I need help.”_

In hindsight, it may be seen as ironic that his journey had first truly ended inside a cage.

Telling, too, that the first person he saw when he found himself there, lying naked at the finish, was _her_. She offered him butter tea and clothes and a kind word, and took his first baby steps into meditation with him. The meditating soothed his mind, the tea his insides, and the rest... Well.

His heart might've been cracked and beaten up and held together by pieces of string and duct tape, but it wasn't broken yet.

The next time he saw her, it was.

\---

_“But then nothing worked ever.”_

His heart wasn't the only thing that was broken inside him in light of recent events: his faith was, too. Maybe not on the surface, not really, because he still went through all the chants and herbs and meditations devoutly, perhaps even more so than before. But under that it must have been, because how else could it be that no matter what he did, how hard he tried, chanted until his voice cracked and his knees bled from falling onto them another time... it was gone.

\---

_“Sometimes I wanted to just... just relax and give in.”_

The bark of the tree underneath his palm felt more solid than perhaps anything of late.

Tempting, so tempting... to give in, to let go. To let the darkness and nature take him and the supernatural to truly and wholly claim him, like he was sure the universe had had it in for him from the start. No desperation, no anguish, no fear, no pain. And most of all: no more burden of elusive humanity. After all, animals were oblivious to broken and tired souls.

_Maybe this is what Veruca felt, before._

As she takes him by the hand and leads him back to the monastery, he knows there are things that feel stronger and more real than trees.

\---

_"But I didn't."_

He talks, and she listens, and sometimes they switch roles. Tells him of a Tibetan religion older than the Buddhism they've been practicing, and finds there's still a piece in him that says, _All right, let's try this_ , and wonders how big a part she plays in finding it.

Slowly, showing him, reading, teaching, learning, creating and inventing, she mends his faith, and his heart. At he same time, but independent.

\---

_“People come to Tibet to be cured.”_

When people start showing up, Bay says she can see it in their eyes. They ask—politely, reserved, kindly—for help, but underneath the civilized are positively begging for a cure while throwing themselves before their feet and crying.

They're desperate, she says, desperate and battered and beat down, like the splintered pieces of their soul are shining through their eyes with fractured light.

She knows, she says, because it's the same look _he_ had when he came here.

 _When?_ he asks.

She replies, _Both times_ , though he didn't really need to be told.

 _Is it there now?_ , he asks, gazing into hers, brown like wenge and reminding him of warmth and trees in autumn.

 _No_ , she says, and smiles. _You are whole._

He kisses her, and that's when he feels it, too.

\---

_"This is Kelden."_

The morning Bay's water breaks, the universe breaks with it, and reforms itself in a way it appears it was always meant to be in.

During delivery, she almost breaks his hand, too.

Oz has seen a lot of weird and unnatural stuff in his days, seen the dead walk the earth (and sometimes drive cars, too), felt his own body shatter and break apart, witnessed Mayors turn into snakes, mothers burn their daughters and schoolgirls save the earth.

This, though... this takes the cake; the supernatural has nothing on this. Tiny ears, tiny hands and tiny feet with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes – each of which he could write a dozen different songs about. Bay's dark eyes and hair, his own nose and mouth, wrapped up in a blanket of love and lying asleep in his arms.

(When Bay asks him if he's crying, he chokes a very manly “no” and makes them both laugh.)

Bay holds up the covers for him and he crawls with her underneath, laying their son between them like a _dpal be'u_ to be worshiped. He reaches over, carefully, and kisses his wife, on her forehead and her lips, and settles in around them.

He is whole, and home, and finished; his journey complete.

**Author's Note:**

> The _dpal be'u_ or endless knot is one of the Eight Auspicious Buddhist Symbols. It can be interpreted in many ways, though symmetrical knots that tie into themselves, without beginning or end, are a universal symbol of eternity, unity and love. One Buddhist explanation is that it signifies the dramatic interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the world – good and evil. Eventually the two are united as one, and create harmony in the universe.


End file.
